Scoundrel refuge

Monday, February 25, 2013

In politics nowadays, ethnicity is the last refuge of a scoundrel. It’s the refuge Sen. Robert Menendez is seeking in his hour of tribulation.

Fleeing the spotlight of controversy, Menendez recently took cover in Trenton’s Shiloh Baptist Church. There he made a play for commiseration, telling the largely African-American audience gathered for a Black History Month event that he, too, has “felt the sting of discrimination.”

Oh boo hoo and snuffle snuffle.

The poor, put-upon fellow has suffered the indignity of discrimination to the extent of having been elected mayor of his hometown; elected to the state legislature and given a seat on its powerful budget committee; elected to the Senate and anointed chairman of its prestigious and influential Foreign Affairs Committee.

Why, just reciting the indignities of discrimination to which Menendez has been subjected is almost too much to bear.

Please.Had the senator whined that he has felt the sting of unsubstantiated, anonymous accusations as politicians sometimes do, that would have been partly true of the controversy in which he finds himself enmeshed. Partly.

The conservative Daily Caller spread allegations from anonymous sources (reportedly, prostitutes) that the senator partook of underage “escorts” in the Dominican Republic arranged by a wealthy campaign donor, an eye doctor named Solamon Melgen.

These allegations are best disregarded unless or until they’re substantiated. And it wouldn’t be advisable to hold your breath awaiting such a development.

The allegations may well be driven by an ideological agenda against the liberal Menendez, as he suggests. But it would be as baseless as the allegations themselves to suggest they derive somehow from Menendez’ Cuban ancestry.

It’s not the senator’s ethnicity that has him mired in the quagmire of controversy — it’s his own conduct apart from the allegations of assignations with underage escorts.

Menendez took flights on the doctor’s private jet to his Dominican Republic vacation digs — an ethics violation. Once exposed, Menendez hastened to pay the $50,000-plus price of the freebie. Now his story is that he intended to reimburse the price all along but it just slipped his mind. That alibi has folks sniggering — and the sniggering’s got nothing to do with the senator’s Cuban name.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post has reported that Menendez went to bat for Melgen — a Florida, not a New Jersey resident — when the Medicare people raised questions about the doc’s billings. Also, Menendez reportedly acted as a meddling Washington advocate for a Dominican Republic port security contract in which Melgen had a big stake.

Would Menendez have gone to such lengths of helpfulness had Melgen been just another professional entangled in a dispute with federal bureaucrats instead of a major sugar-daddy campaign contributor to the senator specifically and to Democrats generally? Good luck peddling that version, Senator.

If the best defense Menendez can make for himself is that he’s being picked on because he’s of Cuban ancestry, he’d do himself a favor just to remain mum.